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Competition commission has put the cat among the pigeons

When the relationships between auditors and some listed companies can be measured in decades, with some spanning more than a century, the idea that companies should be forced to retender for audit services as often as every seven years is a bold suggestion indeed.

But this is what the UK’s Competition Commission (CC) has – albeit provisionally and with much further consultation to come before a final statement in the Autumn – suggested this morning, in what the CC’s audit group chair Laura Carstensen admits represents “some quite radical suggestions”.

The issue Carstensen’s group originally set out to address was the perception that extended relationships between businesses and their auditors breed a kind of familiarity that prevents shareholders’ interests from being protected when auditors run the rule over corporate accounts.

It stands to reason, after all, that an auditor with a longstanding rapport with the management of a business might be inclined to audit financial statements in a way more beneficial to the interests of that management team than to its shareholders.

To shake up this supposedly cosy state of affairs, the CC has proposed mandatory retendering and rotation of audit firms. This, in addition to the prohibition of "Big Four only" clauses in loan documentation, which restrict lending to companies audited by PwC, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Deloitte, and measures to increase engagement between auditors and shareholders.

On paper, mandatory rotation certainly looks like it would protect shareholder interests and increase competition, with smaller firms gaining audit market share from the Big Four, which currently take the lion’s share.

In practice, the concept invokes serious practical considerations that many, especially among the Big Four, think could be counterproductive to the quality of audit services.

First and foremost, mandatory rotation has cost implications to both auditors, who spend time and money on pitches to prospective clients, and those being audited. There are also setting-up costs for auditors and companies in new audit engagements.

Audit rotation after short periods also poses a threat to audit quality, particularly as engagements come to an end. Auditor rotation on a seven year basis is arguably ill-suited to large, complicated financial institutions whose inner workings require a long period for audit teams to understand.

In any case, audit firms already rotate engagement partners with clients to ensure independence, so it is not as if the profession has done nothing to address the issue of over-familiarity.

But then again, this is exactly what consultation periods are for, and the CC itself acknowledges both the range of possible approaches to the rotation and retendering issue, seeking views on rotation periods of seven, ten and 14 years, and the fact that further recommendations would be contingent on responses to the current proposals.

Carstensen, speaking to me for International Accounting Bulletin this morning, said there is “evidence there is a price benefit to tendering, but we have to weigh up the costs and benefits – we want to know how we can find a point of equilibrium where the benefits are captured, but in such a way that it is not unduly costly or burdensome.”

There is plenty of time to find this point of equilibrium. This morning’s release only represents a summary of provisional findings, and the full text won’t be available until next week, with final recommendations to come in August at the earliest.

Nevertheless, they certainly represent a more aggressive stance to shaking up the market than many in the audit market had expected, and are likely to prompt a broader change in attitudes beyond the UK.

For some time the EU has been rumbling through its own debate on audit reform, and after making some fairly conservative recommendations towards the end of last year, has been widely regarded as waiting on what comes out of the CC before making further statements. Certainly, the CC’s suggestions on mandatory rotation are unambiguously more hard line than anything that has come out of Brussels.

Carstensen told me she expected today’s comments and future findings from the commission to have a definite impact on the continuing EU debate. “Brussels has a lot of respect for our process as very rigorous and very evidence based, and I would expect parties there to be very interested in what we conclude, and the basis on which we reach it.”

In this context, one wonders if the decision to start the rotation discussion at a benchmark of five to seven years was a move designed to bring more impassioned debate to a discussion that some perceived as having become quite flat. Whatever the intention, it has certainly had that effect.

The Autumn Statement proved it – we need a real alternative to austerity, now

After six wasted years of failed Conservative austerity measures, Philip Hammond had the opportunity last month in the Autumn Statement to change course and put in place the economic policies that would deliver greater prosperity, and make sure it was fairly shared.

Instead, he chose to continue with cuts to public services and in-work benefits while failing to deliver the scale of investment needed to secure future prosperity. The sense of betrayal is palpable.

The headline figures are grim. An analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that real wages will not recover their 2008 levels even after 2020. The Tories are overseeing a lost decade in earnings that is, in the words Paul Johnson, the director of the IFS, “dreadful” and unprecedented in modern British history.

Meanwhile, the Treasury’s own analysis shows the cuts falling hardest on the poorest 30 per cent of the population. The Office for Budget Responsibility has reported that it expects a £122bn worsening in the public finances over the next five years. Of this, less than half – £59bn – is due to the Tories’ shambolic handling of Brexit. Most of the rest is thanks to their mishandling of the domestic economy.

Time to invest

The Tories may think that those people who are “just about managing” are an electoral demographic, but for Labour they are our friends, neighbours and the people we represent. People in all walks of life needed something better from this government, but the Autumn Statement was a betrayal of the hopes that they tried to raise beforehand.

Because the Tories cut when they should have invested, we now have a fundamentally weak economy that is unprepared for the challenges of Brexit. Low investment has meant that instead of installing new machinery, or building the new infrastructure that would support productive high-wage jobs, we have an economy that is more and more dependent on low-productivity, low-paid work. Every hour worked in the US, Germany or France produces on average a third more than an hour of work here.

Labour has different priorities. We will deliver the necessary investment in infrastructure and research funding, and back it up with an industrial strategy that can sustain well-paid, secure jobs in the industries of the future such as renewables. We will fight for Britain’s continued tariff-free access to the single market. We will reverse the tax giveaways to the mega-rich and the giant companies, instead using the money to make sure the NHS and our education system are properly funded. In 2020 we will introduce a real living wage, expected to be £10 an hour, to make sure every job pays a wage you can actually live on. And we will rebuild and transform our economy so no one and no community is left behind.

May’s missing alternative

This week, the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, gave an important speech in which he hit the proverbial nail on the head. He was completely right to point out that societies need to redistribute the gains from trade and technology, and to educate and empower their citizens. We are going through a lost decade of earnings growth, as Carney highlights, and the crisis of productivity will not be solved without major government investment, backed up by an industrial strategy that can deliver growth.

Labour in government is committed to tackling the challenges of rising inequality, low wage growth, and driving up Britain’s productivity growth. But it is becoming clearer each day since Theresa May became Prime Minister that she, like her predecessor, has no credible solutions to the challenges our economy faces.

Crisis in Italy

The Italian people have decisively rejected the changes to their constitution proposed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, with nearly 60 per cent voting No. The Italian economy has not grown for close to two decades. A succession of governments has attempted to introduce free-market policies, including slashing pensions and undermining rights at work, but these have had little impact.

Renzi wanted extra powers to push through more free-market reforms, but he has now resigned after encountering opposition from across the Italian political spectrum. The absence of growth has left Italian banks with €360bn of loans that are not being repaid. Usually, these debts would be written off, but Italian banks lack the reserves to be able to absorb the losses. They need outside assistance to survive.

Bail in or bail out

The oldest bank in the world, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, needs €5bn before the end of the year if it is to avoid collapse. Renzi had arranged a financing deal but this is now under threat. Under new EU rules, governments are not allowed to bail out banks, like in the 2008 crisis. This is intended to protect taxpayers. Instead, bank investors are supposed to take a loss through a “bail-in”.

Unusually, however, Italian bank investors are not only big financial institutions such as insurance companies, but ordinary households. One-third of all Italian bank bonds are held by households, so a bail-in would hit them hard. And should Italy’s banks fail, the danger is that investors will pull money out of banks across Europe, causing further failures. British banks have been reducing their investments in Italy, but concerned UK regulators have asked recently for details of their exposure.

John McDonnell is the shadow chancellor

John McDonnell is Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington and has been shadow chancellor since September 2015.